Reports - Lead and Sales Status

Arguably the most critical aspect in determining your overall success with SolarNexus as a CRM and project management tool will be in your ability to ensure that the staff using SolarNexus always updates the current status of all leads/projects. Status is determined by milestones, with the assistance of the Milestone Status and Project Log notes.

This article provides a starting place for evaluating your staff's performance on maintaining status in SolarNexus. SolarNexus automatically populates a Project Detail report called "Active Leads and Opportunities" (Operations menu > Reports > Project Detail Reports).

NOTE: Older SolarNexus accounts may not have this report pre-populated. 

1. Run Report Every Day

The best approach to verifying proper status updates is to never let it get out of control in the first place.

2. Evaluate Status of Projects

Here are some things to look for when using the standard SolarNexus sales milestones:

1. Are there any unassigned leads? Be sure that every lead is immediately assigned and acted upon. You can bulk assign leads using the Sales screen (filter on sales owner = unassigned).
2. Are disqualified leads and closed-lost opportunities archived? Make sure to click the Archive button in the status section of each unqualified lead, customers who have bought from others, have become unresponsive, etc.
3. Do the completed milestones (Qualified, Proposed, Sold, Archived) accurately reflect current status?
4. Are the time periods between successive completed milestones reasonable?
5. Does the Milestone Status reflect what is currently pending? (i.e. what is being waited on?) Note that updating the Milestone Status field is not required in all status cases - as long as its clear why the next milestone is not yet complete. For example, if you capture sales appointment times, that can be added. If the lead shows "Qualified," but "Proposed" is incomplete, and you see that the appointment is tomorrow, then you already know why "Proposed" is incomplete.

3. Apply Training and Behavioral Strategies

Here are some Strategies for Employee Success

• Clearly define high quality data input as a job responsibility, make performance reviews reflect this aspect.
• Display project detail reports during team meetings, calling out incomplete information. Reinforce the idea that if the information is not there, then it means that it isn't done.
• Run Project Summary reports that compare the completion times of project milestones across the team. Show stats to the team.
• Refuse to accept sales on projects without acceptable data.
• Connect acceptable input to compensation. For example, commission dedu
• Have users who are completing status appropriately provide testimonials to how its helping them with their work.
• Assign specific administrative employees to make status updates on behalf of other employees (for example employees who don't have a SolarNexus account).

Suggested Reports:

Active Lead / Opportunity Status

How to Create the Active Leads and Opportunities Report

1. Click Add Report
2. Name: Active Leads and Opportunities
3. Description: Shows progress of leads that have come in during the period specified.
4. Project Criteria - Only Include: Active, Lost, Deferred (uncheck Cancelled and Completed, those are by definition after the sale)
5. In Available Criteria, select: Lead Created and Sales Owner (these are filters). No need to check the boxes next to them.
6. In Output Columns, select: Project Name, Site Address, Sales Owner, Lead Source, Milestone Status, Lead Created At, Lead Qualified At, Proposed At, Sold At, Opportunity Lost At
7. Click Save.